


In the Still of the Night

by debwalsh



Series: Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me [4]
Category: Agent Carter (Marvel Short Film), Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, Brooklyn, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Letters, Love, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Pining, Reminiscing, SHIELD, Sketchbooks, Strategic Scientific Reserve, life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:00:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1929348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Steve’s disappearance and at the birth of SHIELD, Peggy is in Brooklyn, and meets Bucky’s sister Rebecca, forging a friendship that lasts the lifetime that Steve and Barnes didn’t get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Still of the Night

“We may never verify, Agent Carter.  We may never find that plane.  We may never find …” he trailed off, letting his frustrated gesture finish the sentence for him.

“Howard is sure he’s narrowed the search area –“

“Stark’s a goddamned civilian with too much money to burn.  We need him working on weapons to take down the remnants of Hydra, the Nazi threat, not digging around the ocean for a fantasy.  Agent Carter, _Peggy_ – Captain Rogers is _gone_.”

“No, sir, he is not.  I insist that he be listed as ‘missing in action.’  Not ‘killed in action.’  And I insist that he continue to draw his pay as normal.”

“Peggy, c’mon now. Next you’ll be asking to have Barnes reclassified –“

“No, sir, I will not,” she countered, and he looked at her strangely, more strangely than before.  

“Oh?  You accept that Barnes is dead but not Rogers.”

“ _Steve_ accepted.  Well, not accepted exactly, but recognized it as truth.”  Because if he’d had any reason to believe otherwise, he would have found a way to safely land that plane and come back to find Bucky.  She wondered how she could have missed it.  She had no doubt that Steve had feelings for her, feelings she would like to have enthusiastically reciprocated.  But what Steve had felt for Bucky – what Barnes had felt for his Captain and best friend – well, that was private and powerful.  And she hoped that one day, someone might love her like that, even if it weren’t Steve Rogers.

Colonel Phillips watched her carefully, eyes narrowing.  She knew he was in pain, too.  Knew he’d come to care for and respect that little man from Brooklyn, that little man with the big heart and the even bigger courage.  That man who never gave up.  She pursed her lips and swallowed, trying to school her features to an appropriate impassivity.

“Captain America is KIA, sir, if you like.  But Steve Rogers … Steve Rogers is _missing_ in action.”

“Okay.  Fine.  I’ll inform the senator.  The SSR can continue to allocate his pay packet a little while longer.  Who knows, Stark may get lucky, you may get lucky, we may all get lucky some goddamned day.  And Carter,” he added, his voice low, “I’ve listed them both as MIA – we never did find a body in the Alps.”

“Yes, sir,” Peggy Carter replied, a faint smile on her tight lips.  It was a small thing, but it was hope.  After everything they’d been through, she’d earned a little hope, hadn’t she?  Hadn’t Steve?  And perhaps, hadn’t Barnes?

***

Every step of the way, she discovered little tells that illuminated so much.  First, the fact that James Buchanan Barnes had listed Steven Grant Rogers as his next of kin, despite the fact he was survived by four sisters, all older than him – she knew that because Jim Morita had mentioned the sisters in passing when Peggy had stopped to talk with the remains of Steve’s unit, the so-called Howling Commandos.  Sisters who no doubt had families of their own by now, possibly children to feed.  Sisters who could have benefited from Barnes’s last few pay packets and his death benefits, but based on his wishes, the money went to Steve, as did his personal effects.  And with Steve gone, and his own pay accruing, Steve Rogers was sitting on quite the growing nest egg.  She just hoped he’d be able to come home soon to enjoy it.

She packed the effects away carefully, segregating Barnes’s belongings from Steve’s.  Her fingers burned to rummage through them, to ferret out their secrets, to perhaps find some evidence that belied her suspicions about the two men, but she refrained from invading their privacy, contenting herself with wrapping Barnes’s belongings in tissue paper and placing them into the box as a unit, and then sorting through Steve’s things to combine clothing in one tissue-wrapped parcel.  

She used some of the tissue paper to bundle sketchbooks in another package, resisting the urge to study each page in turn.  Well, perhaps just one.  She’d loved to catch Steve when he was drawing, and it was something he did in the small, quiet moments.  They were rarer than rare in this war, as were men like Steve Rogers.

The most recent sketchbook was on the top, and she opened it gingerly, reverently.  The first drawing was a study of Dum Dum, miraculous in the energy captured in the pencil tracings, the play of light and dark.  Steve had managed to draw out the verve and twinkle of Dum Dum with an economy of line, and she half-expected an irreverent comment to slip unbidden from the penciled grin.  “Oh, Steve,” she breathed, running a fingertip a hair’s breadth above the surface of the paper.  “You have such talent!” 

The next page was a study of Colonel Phillips, all bluster and grump and posturing.  She laughed out loud at the sketch, clapping her hand over her mouth to contain the sound.  “Oh, my.”

The next page was a study of Barnes, and if the portrait of Colonel Philips made her laugh, this one made her gasp.  This was how Steve saw his lifelong friend, and it was achingly beautiful.  Whether from memory or from life, Steve had drawn Barnes’s face reflected in the firelight, lips parted as if for a kiss, eyes shadowed and haunted, yet still lovely with the long thick lashes and the hint of mischief lurking just behind the melancholy.  The beginnings of a smile crooked the corners of his mouth, and his face was impossibly young.  All their faces were impossibly young, but Steve had captured Barnes in a moment of great beauty.  She ran her hand down over the page, still  not touching but hovering, feeling once again that it was only the fact of the size of Steve’s enormous heart that secured her room in it at all.

And the next page was of her, and Steve had drawn it in color.  She recognized the red dress, but the expression … was that how Steve truly saw her?  Her hand flew to her mouth again as she stared at the portrait, the fine lines carving out her face as if from alabaster, the wisps of her hair curling around her cheeks, even the weight of her earrings on her lobes.  Not only had Steve made her beautiful, he’d drawn her so that her face was tilted upward, just so, as if he was about to bend his head to hers and kiss her.  A moment that never happened captured perfectly, trembling on the edge of reality as if ringing in crystal.  It was an image so thoroughly intimate, she felt it had never been meant for any eyes but Steve’s.  And perhaps hers, she thought, as her fingertip drifted over the clean lines and subtle shading.  She felt simultaneously warmed by the care with which Steve had drawn her, and cold at the thought that so many opportunities had passed and would there ever be another?  She slammed the lid down on the thought, refusing to believe that Steve was truly gone.

A part of her felt that she should take possession of it, this portrait of longing and desire, and keep it separate from Steve’s things.  Keep it for herself.  But she’d made a promise that she would keep his belongings set aside for him, and a promise was a promise, especially one made to Steve Rogers, even if she’d only made it in her heart.  Her throat was thick with grief as she closed the sketchbook, smoothing the cover with her hands.  Then she added it back to the stack of sketchbooks and sealed the pile with tissue paper into a prettily packed gift to the future, a remnant of the past.  A promise.

Steve’s art supplies went in another package, little fistfuls of tissue wound up to cover the points of Steve’s pencils.  His dress uniform and the Captain America stage costume were each wrapped by themselves.  His medals went into a snap case.  

There were no letters, no envelopes with precision cuts revealing the censors’ review.  With Barnes at the front, Steve hadn’t had anyone to write to back home, although she wondered if he might not have been close in some way with Barnes’s sisters.  Peggy knew that while Steve had been touring with the USO flogging bonds, he’d been prohibited from posting letters.  She did finally find a single letter from Barnes’s sister Rebecca hidden in his old bedroll when she shook it out.  It was something she hadn’t actually planned to pack, but now … now it seemed appropriate, she supposed.  In the back of her mind, she promised herself she’d track that sister down, and share the story of the Steve Rogers and James+++ Barnes she’d known.  She folded the bedroll and settled it on the top of the box, the letter tucked in beneath.

It saddened her when she surveyed her work, and found that the lives of two brave young men, two men with such great hearts, filled only a single large box.  And she thanked the Lord she’d had the privilege to know them.

***

Howard Stark returned from his self-funded expedition, the Tesseract in his possession, but no reliable trail for Steve or the _Valkyrie_.  The winter ice of the Arctic Sea was forming into impenetrable sheets, and Howard wouldn’t be able to try again until the summer, when the floes broke free and he could force a vessel through the cracking ice.  Such a large frozen sea, and such a small window of opportunity.  Such a small likelihood that Steve still lived.  If she were honest with herself, she’d admit there was no likelihood.  Steve could not have survived in the cold for so long without supplies, even under the influence of Erskine’s serum.  The plane itself could have provided shelter, and she supposed it was possible that Schmidt had outfitted it with supplies, but still.  

And yet.  

“Got some ideas,” Howard was saying, scrubbing his hand across his mustached lip.  “Not giving up, Peg.”

“I know, Howard,” she agreed, patting his hand gently.  “I know.”

***

With the war over, the SSR pulled back its operations to where it had all begun, Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, in America.  A new organization grew out of it, and Peggy was eager to serve in the New York offices.  Disappointingly, the organization failed to count any of her extensive experience in Operation Rebirth as anything more than clerical work, and she was relegated to the role of secretary and code-breaker.  She suspected it was because of the classified nature of Project Rebirth, but still, she had served with distinction in the SSR in Europe.  While she had all the respect in the world for secretaries the world over, and the ladies of Bletchley Park in particular, it wasn’t what she’d expected, nor what she wanted.  And certainly not what she was capable of doing.  

So, three months in, she was still assigned to the Brooklyn branch, and the location suited her.  But that prat of a senior agent, Flynn, was convinced that all she was good for was decryption and dressing up his inept reports.  The man truly was an incompetent ass.

But it had put her back in New York, in Brooklyn specifically, and it had given her some comfort to find herself driving past that alley there, where a man with a heart bigger than his body had found himself beaten up for standing up for what’s right.  Or over there, behind the Post Office, where he’d stood his ground against a bully.  And there, where he’d raced into the world, newly reborn, unaware of his power, driven only by his will to do _right_.

She still had the box of effects packed all those months ago.  When they’d broken down the headquarters in Europe and shipped back to the States, she’d been careful to ensure it traveled with her, and now occupied a place of honor in her small Brooklyn apartment.  She never opened the box, but it gave her comfort knowing that it was there.  

And now she was about to leave New York and Brooklyn again.  And all the places that reminded her of Steve, where she could still hear his quiet voice point out all the places that echoed his heroism, the heart and the will and fire too big for his small body to contain.  After taking a late-night call in the office, Peggy had done what she was born to do, single-handedly taking down a threat while the menfolk were out boozing it up and congratulating themselves on how clever they all were.  As a result, Howard had finally leveraged his position in SHIELD to secure her a place there, not in the typing pool, but as co-director.  She was pleased at that development, sure she could do far more good in that role than as a code-breaker or secretary.  But it did leave her with some unfinished business that she needed to take care of.

Howard was about to resume his search, captaining an experimental research vessel he’d designed himself.  How he’d managed to have it fabricated in such a short space of time – but then, with the resources at his disposal, there was little Howard Stark couldn’t make happen, and on his schedule rather than anyone else’s.  She knew it frustrated him so that he had not yet found the _Valkyrie_ , or its precious cargo.  But in a few days, he would depart for a lengthy exploratory mission, and she’d have to take over control of SHIELD in Washington, DC.  So really, she only had a day or so to track down James Barnes’s sister.  Fortunately, thanks to SHIELD, she had the appropriate resources to initiate the search.

***

Rebecca O’Leary née Barnes was a pleasant-looking woman in her forties, vivid red hair faded to a dirty blonde, freckles dusted across her nose, and a ready smile.  She’d probably been very pretty in her youth, and had mellowed into a handsome matron.  When she answered the door of her Brooklyn apartment to Peggy, her smile was warm and genuine.  Peggy wondered if Barnes had smiled like that, before the war.  After Steve had mounted his one-man rescue of the 107th, Barnes had smiled, but the smiles rarely reached his eyes, unless he was looking at Steve, and then his smile had a shimmering quality, as if lit from within.  Yes, another tell she’d missed at the time.  

Rebecca Barnes O’Leary stepped aside and waved Peggy in.

The apartment itself was small but scrupulously clean.  Furniture was sturdy and well cared for; none of it was new.  The slipcovers and curtains betrayed her love of chintz, and the plate of still-warm cookies on the coffee table, bracketed by two cups and a real teapot, betrayed her good manners.  Framed photographs lined the simple mantle – Rebecca and a respectable looking older man, a glowing wedding portrait of them both before the war, two twin boys and an older girl, no doubt her children.  Other women with similar features, husbands in tow, and a myriad of children of varying shapes and sizes.  With a start, Peggy realized that she was looking at Barnes’s family, his sisters, their husbands, his nieces and nephews.  She wondered if they knew anything about the hero she’d known.

Rebecca O’Leary nodded Peggy into the best chair in the sitting room, waited until she’d taken her place, then sat down opposite her, smoothing her skirt under her as she did.  She sat on the edge of the chair, poised, waiting.

“You said you had information about Jimmy,” she prompted.  She picked up her purse and flicked the latch, extracted a pack of Lucky Strikes and silently offered them to Peggy.  Peggy shook her head, and Rebecca smiled and shrugged apologetically.  “Picked up the habit during the war, haven’t been able to stop.  Mr. O’Leary doesn’t like it, but once I air out the place, he’ll never know.”  She lit a match to the tip of the cigarette and breathed in, eyes closed.  Then she let out a feathery plume of smoke, and leaned back in her chair, more relaxed, cigarette held poised in two fingers.  “Thank goodness the boys never picked it up – filthy habit, I know.”

“Jimmy.  Ah, James.  I thought his nickname was Bucky.”

“That was Steve’s name for him.  First day they met, Jimmy introduced himself as ‘James Buchanan Barnes’. He was so proud of that mouthful.  Steve spit on the ground and declared he was Bucky, and from that day on, that’s who he was.  But in the family, we still called him Jimmy.”

Peggy had a hard time imagining Steve – relentlessly polite and skittish Steve – spitting on the ground.  Somehow it made him seem less aloof, more endearing.  She smiled at this woman across from her, now hungry to learn more about Steve’s early life.  About Barnes.  “Mrs. O’Leary –“

“Rebecca, please.  Mrs. O’Leary’s my mother-in-law,” she added with a shudder and a grin.   She tapped off a pile of ash in the ceramic ashtray that had materialized from thin air, sitting on the little side table by her chair. 

“Rebecca, then.  Please call me Peggy.  You did receive notification about your brother –“

“Missing in action, presumed killed, somewhere in the Alps, last year, yes,” she admitted tightly.  “Must’ve cut Steve up something fierce.”  This time, the drag on the cigarette was nervous, convulsive, long.  She practically spat the smoke stream into the air to her right.

“Well, yes.  Steve … well, Steve went missing in action only a couple of days later.  Some presume he’s dead, but I like to hold out some hope.”

“No.  If Jimmy was gone, Steve would follow.  No way either of them could live without the other.  They’ve been queer on each other since the day they met.”  Rebecca’s eyes went wide as she realized what she’d just said to Peggy, and she stumbled over herself to try to take it back, but Peggy smiled kindly and waved her off.  

Well, if it was confirmation she was looking for, she’d found it.

“I suspected, of course.  Steve about took out half the Nazi force breaking through enemy lines to get to James.  Broke a number of regulations and several international laws in the process.  What he did was, frankly impossible.  And yet … he saved 400 servicemen, but first and foremost your brother.  He was frantic when he learned Barnes – your brother – was missing in action.  We had no idea he was a prisoner of war, but Steve … Steve wouldn’t rest until he brought your brother home.”

“Steve.  Steve Rogers, little slip of a man,” she cut the air with her palm to indicate a child’s height, “took out a _Nazi_ force?  Are we talking about the same Steve Rogers?”

Peggy swallowed, realizing that she had just breached the Official Secrets Act and several US statutes.  The wild look in Rebecca’s eyes told her she was about to compound her sin.  In for a penny …

“Let’s just say that Steve was part of a secret government project, shall we?  He wasn’t … quite the little slip of a man you remember.  At least not on the outside.  I daresay he was the same brave, headstrong young man you’d always known.”

Rebecca put down the cigarette, letting the thread of smoke skirl and dance on its own, and picked up her teacup to busy herself with the mundane activity.  After taking a sip, she nodded to herself, as though making a decision.  “So that’s why we never heard from him again.  After Jimmy shipped out, Steve came by and asked me to hold onto some things for him.  Didn’t say where he was going or when he’d be back, and I never heard a breath about Steve Rogers again until you called.”

Peggy murmured encouragingly, taking a sip of her tea.  She paused, raising her eyebrows expectantly, and Rebecca continued on as though Peggy had asked a question aloud.

“Not surprised they went like that, one after another.  Like I said, they were queer for each other.  Knew it from the first time they met.  Jimmy was never half as alive as he was when he was with Steve.”

“But I thought that James had a reputation as a ladies’ man.  Steve said –“

Rebecca shook her head, her nose crinkling.  “Jimmy liked girls, yeah. But he loved Steve.”

“It must have been hard –“

“Having a brother who was a pansy?  Oh, he put it around with the girls soon as he was old enough to grow hair.  You wouldn’t suspect, really, if you didn’t see them together.  Da would’ve beat him bloody if he’d known, try to beat the queer right out of him.  Da did beat him once when Jimmy broke curfew – Steve was dying, the priest had been by to give him Extreme Unction, Last Rites?  Not the first time, not the last, poor boy.  But there was no way Jimmy was going to let Steve go alone.  Jimmy snuck out of the house and made his way down to the Rogers’s, and didn’t come home for nearly a week.  Da would’ve killed him for that, except Mrs. Rogers, Sarah, came and thanked Da for letting Jimmy stay.  Said it saved Steve’s life.  Even Father O’Clanahan agreed, said Jimmy was God’s angel sent to look after Steve until He was ready to take him home.  After that, Da had no choice but to let Jimmy stay with Steve.  The priest had blessed it.”  She chuckled at the memory.  “Da wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t going to cross the priest.”

Peggy smiled, nodding.  “So, did they –“

“Ever act on it?  I don’t know.  I never wanted to know.  Wasn’t a good time to be queer, even in New York.  They shared an apartment for a couple of years before Jimmy shipped out, but like I said, Jimmy liked girls, too.  Steve, too.  I remember him mooning over the girl who worked the lunch counter in Woolworth’s one summer.  Boy had it bad.  But girls could be mean to someone like him.  Couldn’t see what a big heart he had.  But Jimmy earned a reputation for showing a girl a good time.  Different girl every time.  But if you knew how to look, you could see it was all for show.  Only person ever meant anything to Jimmy was Steve.  What was hard was watching them break their hearts over each other every damned day.  Nobody ever loved me like that, although Mr. O’Leary’s not a bad sort.  We have a routine, you know?  How about you?”

Peggy found herself unable to answer the question at first, caught off-guard.  She studied it for a moment, and finally settled on, “I’d like to think I might have, in time.  But there wasn’t time.”

“Oh.”

“Yes?”

“You were sweet on Steve,” Rebecca O’Leary nee Barnes breathed, her face alight with wonder.  “I always knew he’d find someone someday who could see that light burning bright in him.  So it was you.”

“I –“

“I have his things, you know.  His pictures.  His drawings, some photos.  Not much.  But something tells me he would have liked you to  have them.  Would you like …?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Peggy breathed.  “Yes.  I have your brother’s effects, not much, his uniform really, bedroll, your letter – would you like them?”

Rebecca shook her head.  “No, keep ‘em with Steve.  It’s where he’d want to be.”

***

Rebecca kept Steve’s belongings in a small trunk under one of the twin beds in the boys’ room.  More of a footlocker, really, scuffed and scarred from years of use.  “Steve didn’t have anyone else once his Ma passed.  His Dad died after the first war, you know.  Complications from mustard gas when Steve was a baby.  I didn’t know him, but our Ma said it was a horrible way to die.”  Kneeling on the carpeted floor, she opened the lock, eased it out of the latch, and lifted the lid, revealing more sketchbooks, a pile of sepia-toned photographs, some faded to nearly nothing, odds and ends from Steve Rogers’ earlier life.  

One photo on top of the pile in particular was vividly clear, preserved lovingly in a simple wooden frame, the glass protecting it from time and elements.  It was Barnes and Steve, knock-kneed in short pants, braces and untucked shirts, arms slung round each other’s shoulders, grinning madly at the camera.  The amusements at Coney Island stretched behind them.  Peggy felt her fingers drawn to it, and asked, “May I?”

Rebecca nodded, picking up the photo and passing it to Peggy.

“My heavens, how young they look,” she breathed.

“If memory serves, they would’ve been about 12 or 13 when that was taken.  Jimmy had just started his growth spurt, and we were all rooting for Steve to follow.  He grew a little, but not enough to catch up.  He didn’t smile as much after that.  This was Jimmy’s favorite picture, Steve’s too.”

“I can see why,” Peggy said softly, wonderingly, rubbing her thumb across the silky smooth wood of the frame.  “They look so happy.”

Rebecca sat back on her heels then, and really looked at Peggy.  “You never saw them this way,” she whispered, a catch in her voice.  “Never saw them smiling, laughing.”

“No, I … no, I didn’t.  War changes people, of course.  But no, I never saw this … unbridled joy.  Not in either of them.”  As she stared at the unfettered grins of the boys in the picture, a gasp caught in Peggy Carter’s throat then, followed by a sob.  Her fingers closed over her mouth as the sob grew to two, three, a string.  A torrent.

Rebecca O’Leary eased her bulk over toward Peggy and wrapped her arm around her shoulder, soothing her with murmurs of, “Let it out.  No one can hold it in forever.”

Peggy turned into Rebecca’s supportive arms then, pressed her check against her shoulder and wept.  Wept as she’d never allowed herself to do, not once in the days since Barnes’s death and Steve’s crash.  Rebecca kept making soft, soothing sounds, as she would to a weeping child, and Peggy clung to Barnes’s sister like she was the last thing between her and losing her sanity.  Rebecca held on just as fast.

When she’d cried herself out, she disentangled herself from Rebecca with an embarrassed apology, and Rebecca waved it off negligently.  “Truth is, I kinda needed that, too,” she told Peggy, sniffling and wiping along under her eyes with a shaky forefinger.  The tears had washed her mascara and rouge down her cheeks, runneling her foundation.  Her fingers couldn’t repair the damage, but the tears had somehow lightened her, lifted a burden that made her seem years younger.  Another sniffle, and Rebecca announced, “And now I need somethin’ else.  Somethin’ stronger, hmm?  Let’s take this back into the living room, okay?”  Awkwardly, both women got up off the floor, and Rebecca retrieved the box to take it from the twins’ room and out to the common area.

***

An hour later found them with a bottle of wine, two large glasses, heels kicked off, skirts hitched up, and the contents of the box spread around them in neat stacks.  The sketchbooks stretched from Steve and Barnes’s childhoods through to just before Steve joined Project Rebirth.  

Peggy was especially fond of an early drawing, in crayon of all things, of a brown-haired little boy in knee pants and braces, standing tall in the chaos of a scribbled schoolyard.  Rebecca leaned over and looked at it, chuckling.  “That would be my brother,” she said fondly.  “All knees and bravado.  He could be beautiful.”

Peggy lifted her glass and Rebecca followed suit.  “To youth.  So wasted on the young.”  Peggy and Rebecca dissolved into giggles then.

“What’s that?” Peggy demanded, her clipped tones a little slurred after a couple of glasses of wine.

“Bank book.  I remember this.  Steve and Jimmy called it their ‘future fund’.  Every week, they put a few pennies away, even if they didn’t have more than two cents to rub together.  They were saving up for their future.”

“Did they have any special plans?” 

“Steve wanted to see the world,” Rebecca explained.  “Jimmy only wanted to see it through Steve’s eyes.”  Her hand jerked to her mouth then, trapping another sob.  “I’m glad they found each other again in the end.”

“Mmm,” Peggy agreed, frowning.  “You know that your brother put Steve down as next of kin.”  Rebecca nodded.  “They’re both still receiving pay as well.  Perhaps you should start depositing those pay packets.”

“In the future fund?”

“Yes, don’t you think?”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Peggy was silent for a long moment, took the opportunity to drain her glass.  “Let’s just say I have hope, Rebecca.  Nothing more than that.”

Rebecca nodded, her eyes bright.  “Me, too.”

In the end, Rebecca agreed to start depositing Barnes’s and Steve’s pay in their future fund account, a task she would carry on for years to come, until she turned the responsibility over to her oldest, her daughter, Julia.  And when direct deposit became a reality, that daughter filled out the forms and it all became automatic.  Just in case.

***

In addition to the parcel of Steve’s belongings, Rebecca remembered Barnes’s letters, both the ones sent to her and a slender stack of letters addressed to Steve.  They all arrived after Steve had gone to Basic at Camp Lehigh.  None sent to Steve had been opened.   Rebecca explained that the postman had handed them to her since Steve had not left a forwarding address.  He’d explained that since she was Jimmy’s sister, it was probably all right.  She gave the letters to Peggy as well, explaining that she really did want everything that was her little brother to be with whatever was left of Steve.  

Peggy was struck yet again at how the world had conspired against those two boys from Brooklyn.  Barnes had written letter upon letter to Steve faithfully, posting them at regular intervals based on the postmarks.  They’d travelled all the way home, to an addressee long gone, shunted across the country on the USO circuit Senator Brandt had arranged.  She could picture Barnes in his billet, fretting over the lengthening time with no answer from Steve.  Not one.  Steve had never seen them, never known that his best friend had written, never known of the lonely correspondent waiting patiently for an answer that would never come.  She wondered if they’d ever talked about the letters, if Barnes had ever questioned why Steve hadn’t answered, or if that had hung unanswered between them until the end.  She wondered if Steve had … _disappeared_ … unaware, and Barnes had somehow thought that Steve had not cared.

The idea made her heart clench.  So much left unsaid …  She envied Barnes his years with Steve.  In the quiet recesses of her mind, she could admit this small fact.  But that was nothing compared to what had been taken away from the two men.  

She took another sip of her wine, and decided the wine might be making her maudlin.  Or perhaps she just needed another glass.

Peggy and Rebecca drank a little too much that afternoon, shared a little too much, and cried a little too much.  They vowed to remain friends as Peggy left for DC and SHIELD.  

***

And they did stay in touch.  Letters, phone calls, holidays.  Brooklyn wasn’t so far from Washington, DC, and SHIELD business often brought Peg back to New York.  Rebecca was Peggy’s matron of honor when she married several years later, and later still the godmother of Peggy’s first child.  Peggy looked back on those days with fondness and steel – she’d defied the conventional wisdom of the time and remained on the job throughout her entire pregnancy, scandalizing everyone that she was seen in public with a belly so large it seemed she’d burst.  

And in the days following the birth, Peggy had continued to command SHIELD, from the hospital and then from home, much to the consternation of Eisenhower, who, like most men of his time, assumed a woman should give birth and retire to the nursery.  Stark was only too happy to have Peggy in command, as it afforded him the luxury to continue his hopeful trips to the Arctic.  He even led an expedition to the ravines of the Alps, along the track of the train from which Barnes fell.  No expedition reported success after the retrieval of the Tesseract that first year, and yet the years slogged on.  Chester was growing older, and he was happier taking a lesser role over time.

And there were the gatherings when the Howling Commandos reunions started – picnics, barbeques, holiday parties, and Christmas in Vermont.  Peggy and her husband never missed an event, and as their family grew, their children joined in.  Rebecca and her family, as well as her sisters and their clans, joined in the Howling Commandos gatherings, along with Howard Stark and Colonel Phillips and his family.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, sometimes vacations or special occasions.

And they always gathered on the Fourth of July, also known as Independence Day, but fondly remembered as Steve Rogers’s birthday.  The Commandos would take a moment to raise a glass and set off fireworks in honor of their Captain, of Steve.  

Her husband would always make a special, quiet tribute, acknowledging the fact that he owed his life to Steve, having been among the prisoners Steve had liberated that first time behind enemy lines.  

The Barnes children would talk about Uncle James and Uncle Steve, and Peggy was grateful that Barnes’s sisters didn’t let their brother’s memory fade, that they treated Steve’s equally as precious.  She was warmed by the familiarity, by the fact that Barnes’s sisters held the memory of Steve and shared it with their children.  

In August, the Barnes clan would join Peggy and her family for one last gasp of summer before the children returned to school, summering on a lake in upstate New York.  It was a home she and her husband had purchased in the early days of their marriage, and he enjoyed having it filled with boisterous Barneses as much as she did.  He’d known Barnes, liked and respected him, and he seemed to find some comfort in the bosom of Barnes’s extended family, too.

It occurred to Peggy that she and Rebecca were living the lives that Steve and Barnes had been denied, raising families together, building memories.  Steve and Barnes were gone, but Peggy and Rebecca and the entire Barnes clan and the Howling Commandos and their families kept them alive in their hearts.

Over time, the ranks of the Howling Commandos swelled as the Commandos themselves married, had children, and eventually grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

Peggy remembered how Rebecca had said that Steve had wanted to see the world, and at the next reunion, she asked that everyone send postcards from their travels so she collect collect them.  And she quietly built a scrapbook of all the people spun out from the friendship of Steve Rogers and James “Bucky” Barnes, an army growing larger with each passing year.

The gathering places changed.  The hairstyles, the clothing choices.  The music and the world around them.  Even the time of year and sometimes the configuration of stars when one of their number went down.

When enough time had passed, when the war had given way to conflict, Peggy revealed to Rebecca and her sisters Steve’s secret.  A knowing glance travelled from one to the other.  They knew why Steve had allowed himself to be altered – patriotism, yes, but more importantly, Barnes, their brother.  

She reached the point where she wondered how she could have missed it at all, and was thankful that the man she married knew Steve, knew Captain America, and knew the difference.  Knew Barnes, too, and the pull between the two young men hadn’t been lost on him either.  If he’d harbored any jealousy for the spark that still burned in her, he never mentioned it, and she loved him all the fiercer for it.  Their lives together were sweet and full of light, and their children were her greatest accomplishments.

By the time that the country was neck deep in blood in an undeclared war, SHIELD sponsored a memorial at Arlington, finally naming Captain America, and memorializing Sargent James Buchanan Barnes in the marble.  At the same time, Steve and Barnes were added to the Founders’ Wall at SHIELD.  It was Chester’s idea, the tomb and the wall, but Howard protested the memorial claiming that any day now he’d find Steve, alive and well, in the Arctic, and his identity should be protected.  

Peggy had surprised herself by siding with Chester on the memorial.  She supposed as the years passed with no sign of Steve, it became easier to accept he’d never come home.  It might have been easier, but it was the hardest thing she’d ever done.  Peggy’s persuasion was gentle, but eventually Howard relented, and the Rebecca and her sisters, and all their children, attended the commission service, and were thrilled to meet John F. Kennedy when he joined them to pay respects to America’s greatest wartime heroes.  And even if Howard was right, and he did find Steve, it didn’t hurt to have a reminder of what those men had done, sacrificed, for freedom.

When Rebecca’s sons graduated college, it was Peggy who offered her son, Albert, his first job as an intelligence analyst for SHIELD.  His brother applied for and was accepted in the more action-oriented agent development program.

By then, the children were grown and had started their own families.  Many of the children worked for SHIELD in some capacity, while others went into public service in other ways.  To a man and a woman, they all embodied the spirit that Captain America had represented, and Peggy knew that Steve would have been proud of what he and Barnes had started.  She was especially proud of her own children, proud that they chose SHIELD as their agency of choice.  She felt the future of the agency was in very good hands.

Life moved along at a pleasant pace, a counterpoint to the tense and twisting life she lived as head of SHIELD.  In 1991, Howard and his wife were killed, and Peggy mourned him, mourned their shared experiences, and knew that the search had ended at last.  She stood at the floor to ceiling windows of her office, looking out at the mathematical precision that was Washington, DC at night, and whispered, “Goodbye, Steve.”  No one would search for him again, she knew.  And the admission pained her more than she’d expected, but the pain had been with her always.  A trusted friend, in fact, a companion for her days.

Finally, Peggy retired from SHIELD, turning the reins over to the new generation.  Nick Fury had been up and coming, and he showed great promise.  He’d been personally selected by Howard all those years ago.  She was grateful for her retirement, since it allowed her several sweet years with her husband before cancer claimed him, and left her alone.

And when, in 2001, shortly after the horror that was 9/11, Rebecca, the last of Barnes’s sisters, passed away quietly in her sleep, Peggy laid a wreath at the Rogers and Barnes memorial, and said farewell to her oldest friend.  The funeral was a madhouse, every one of the children and grandchildren of the Howling Commandos, the Legacies as they called themselves, in attendance.  Peggy had given the eulogy, tears tracking down her face as she spoke about the friend she’d found in the face of another tragedy.

In the years to come, her mind became a little less sharp, memories became a little less focused.  She’d forget where she was, and oh my God, she didn’t recognize her own son.  And then memory would flood back at her like morning sunshine.  When it trickled away, she didn’t know enough to miss it.

When it came time to pack up her home and move into the Center, her children asked about an old box full of sketchbooks and letters and oh my God, Mom, is that Captain America’s costume?

Ultimately, she agreed to lend the contents of the box to the Smithsonian.  The agreement made it very clear that it was a loan, not a bequest, and should Steve or Barnes or any member of their or her family request the return of any artifact in that box, the Smithsonian was to turn over everything immediately.  Just in case.

Peggy lived a good life, a long life, and a fulfilling life.  She had a career to take pride in, a family that loved her and that she loved deeply in return.  A life full of friends and joy and laughter.  A partner who shared her days and her nights with equal fervor.

And yet.

And still.

There were moments even now when her thoughts were drawn to the Arctic chill, or a bombed out bar in Europe, or a basement in Brooklyn.  Moments when hope was still a fragile, living thing, a clarion note suspended in the air.

And she smiled.

***

**_In the Still of the Night_ **

In the still of the night  
As I gaze from my window  
At the moon in its flight  
My thoughts all stray to you  
  
In the still of the night  
All the world is in slumber  
All the times without number  
Darling when I say to you  
  
Do you love me, as I love you  
Are you my life to be, my dream come true  
Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight  
Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill  
In the chill, still, of the night  
  
Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill  
In the chill, still, of the night

\- Cole Porter (not to be confused with the song written by Hoagey  
Carmichael and made popular in the 1950s by the Five Satins)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone whose left kudos or comments on the various chunks of this series so far. This particular piece was challenging to write, and was a little bit cathartic, I think. 
> 
> Comments very, very welcome!
> 
> Hey, come follow me on [Tumblr](http://debwalsh.tumblr.com)!


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